'Enquirer' Takes Questionable Approach to Covering Meyers Ordination

Thirty-nine years ago, Enquirer editors
agreed to cover a global story that still reverberates through some
of Christianity’s oldest denominations: the acrimonious debate over
whether women may be priests.

That 1974 event was the ordination of the first
female priests in the Episcopal Church. They were rebels as were the
three traditionally consecrated bishops who ordained them.

None of the women was from the Tristate. The
event was in Philadelphia. It was a big deal and the Enquirer covered
it, irrespective of the divisive local and national furor.

[Read Ben L. Kaufman's July 10 Curmudgeon Notes, including thoughts on the Business Courier redesign and Quebec rail disaster, here.]

Those 11 women’s ordinations were valid but
illicit. Valid because the bishops had the power to do so. Illicit
because the women and bishops violated canon law.

I was the Enquirer’s religion reporter. My
editors knew a story when they saw it and that valid-but-illicit
flavor added zest to the event and coverage.

It
was a great story, not least because of the joy of the women being
ordained. Their ceremony effectively opened the Episcopal
priesthood to women; the denomination removed gender as a
disqualification two years later and regularized the Philadelphia
11’s illicit ordinations in 1977.

With renewed dissent, the first female
Episcopal bishop was consecrated in 1989. Today’s presiding bishop
is Katharine Jefferts Schori.

All of which raises disturbing questions about the Enquirer’s
confused response to the invitation to cover the ordination of Debra
Meyers by Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan of the Association of
Roman Catholic Women Priests.

It would have been the first known local
ordination of a female Catholic priest.

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The Enquirer refused to cover Meyers’
ordination on May 25. Management’s reasoning was
captured by Janice Sevre-Duszynska, an ordained American member of
the association and a contributor to Article 25, our local human
rights newspaper. In March, I wrote how Italian police interrupted
Sevre-Duszynska’s standing protest against the Vatican practice of
an all-male priesthood.

Home again in Kentucky, she invited coverage of
Meyers’ ordination ceremony at St. John’s Unitarian Church in
Clifton. In an email exchange with the Enquirer, an aide
to editor Carolyn Washburn told Sevre-Duszynska that
when the aide asked about coverage, “I was told no, as you
admit in your email that your ordinations are considered illegal.”

Women’s ordination is no more “illegal” than abortion or
artificial contraception under Catholic canon law but the Enquirer
reports extensively about those and distinguishes between the demands
of canon and civil law.

So that’s where this gets disturbing. No answer makes sense if
we’re talking about rational news judgment.

Is it possible that senior Enquirer editors couldn’t distinguish
between canon law and civil law? Roman Catholic canon law allows only
male priests. Civil law says nothing about what’s licit or
illicit in Roman Catholic ordinations.

If editors failed to ask reporter Julie Irwin Zimmerman — who writes
knowledgeably about religion and covered it for the Enquirer years
ago — that was a serious oversight. She could have explained these
distinctions and, possibly, affected the decision to ignore Meyers’
ordination.

Scarier than an ignorant inability to distinguish canon from civil
law is the possibility that the Enquirer knowingly subjects its news
judgment to religious law, Catholic (canon), Jewish (halakhah) or
Islamic (sharia).

It would have been better if Enquirer editors said they’d ignore
NKU history professor Meyers’ ordination at St. John’s to avoid
offending more traditional Catholic readers.

Then
this affair goes from disturbing to weird. Although the Enquirer said
it would not cover an “illegal” event, a reporter for related
weekly Clermont County Community Press reported Meyers’ ordination
and posted it days later on the Enquirer’s Cincinnati.com. Her story included a sympathetic interview with newly ordained
Meyers. The headline was “Batavia woman fights to change Catholic
Church.”

For context, Community Press reporter Roxanna Swift
quoted Dan Andriacco, communications
director for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. “From
our point of view as Roman Catholics, it (ordination) didn’t really
take place,” Andriacco told her. Ordination can only be
conferred by the proper authority, he said, and the proper authority
would be a bishop. Because the Vatican does not recognize women as
bishops, Meyers’ ordination is illegal and invalid, Andriacco said.

Youtube has video of Meyers’ ordination.
Local coverage — beyond Clermont County Community Press — was scarce.
Article 25 and WNKU reported Meyers’ ordination. CityBeat
interviewed Meyers before the ceremony.